One of the big complaints about Hearthstone is the price to play when you first start. There are a ton of legendaries released, and if you are unlucky you may have not received much in the way of playable cards. This is unfortunate, so we’ve gone ahead and created some budget decks that should serve you well if you are in the ranks around 25 – 15. As you get closer to 10, however, the road is going to be much more difficult and only a couple of them will manage to continue to climb steadily.

One positives about the release of Knights of the Frozen Throne is that there were changes to packs that give you a guaranteed legendary in the first 10 packs of a new set, and removes the possibility of getting a duplicate legendary from a pack! Frozen Throne also started the trend of giving out a free legendary card. In Knights, we got a free legendary Death Knight hero, Kobolds and Catacombs we got a free legendary weapon, and with The Witchwood and The Boomsday Project we got a free class legendary!

Budget Deck Recommendations

Token Druid, Mech Paladin, Combo Dragon Priest, Aggro Mage, and Zoo Warlock are the best of the lists. Zoo, Aggro Mage, and Token Druid both have very good transitions to meta lists. If you want to get right into the meta, then these are the decks I would start with.

Budget Decks in The Boomsday Project

We’re into the second expansion of the Year of the Raven which makes building budget decks a bit easier. The increase in card pool means an increase in quality of common and rare cards. We’ve now got Giggling Inventor, Mecharoo, Wargear, Bronze Gatekeeper, and others that are cheap neutrals that can potentially fit into your decks. Another great thing for budget players is that Warlock Zoo is very powerful right now. This is always one of the best decks to start out with in the game, and it can do great work on the ladder at just about all stages even in its budget form!

Budget Player Goals

I encourage you not to make your goal to go to all the way to legend. It’s a tough climb even if you have a meta deck, let alone if you are running a budget deck. There’s no real reason to do it, and it will likely make Hearthstone a far more grueling experience than it needs to be (there are no win-streaks which help immensely when climbing). Rank 5 is a fine goal if you are getting close to a meta version of any of these decks, and you get nearly the same rewards at rank 5 as legend does at the end of the season.

Cheap Hearthstone Decks

Our rule is that we don’t include any budget deck that has Epic or Legendary cards. You might have opened up some, however, and in most cases we list which of these cards can be added to the deck. There is a deck for EVERY class! Be sure to click on the deck name at the top of each deck for a full guide!

Cheap Midrange Hunter decks have been a mainstay of the budget player for a while now. Unfortunately, Midrange Hunter got very little in The Boomsday Project, so there’s not much change if you have been playing this previously. However, it’s still a very solid and cheap list that can do well on the ladder.

Burn Mage is a solid list if you are looking to play some Mage in The Boomsday Project meta. This deck converts pretty well into the popular Tempo Mage that can be used to Legend.

If you were lucky enough to get Aluneth as your free Legendary weapon you got for logging in during Kobolds and Catacombs or out of a pack it can go right into this deck! If you got Stargazer Luna from The Boomsday Project, that will also fit in this deck.

Paladin got one of the best early game mechs with Glow-Tron, and you can utilize many of the cheap neutral mechs to take advantage of it. This deck also uses the powerful Divine Favor, which will allow you to play your hand out aggressively and refill it if your opponent is holding cards.

You can get away with a pretty strong Dragon Priest for a reasonable cost right now. Duskbreaker is an insane card, and with some Dragons from The Witchwood, and the Inner Fire + Divine Spirit combo you’ve got a pretty formidable deck that’s only a couple of epics away from the meta version!

The Boomsday Project brought some interesting new stuff, but only Topsy Turvy fits in the list.

Warlock Zoo is a great deck to start with if you are just starting out in Hearthstone. You learn the art of efficient minion trading as well as positioning. Kobolds and Catacombs brought two great cards to Zoo which are both common! Kobold Librarian is a powerful early game minion that replaces itself immediately, and Vulgar Homunculus is a great early game taunt that can help protect your other minions from danger.

The Boomsday Project has brought some new additions to the archetype. Soul Infusion which buffs your left-most minion, and in this deck, you will usually have a target. There’s also Doubling Imp, which is one of the targets you are hoping to hit with Infusion, and is a great way to develop a strong board. If you got lucky with your free class legendary, you might have gotten The Soularium. It’s a strong card in Zoo, since you can likely play the majority of the cards you draw on the same turn.

Warrior was once one of the strongest budget classes because of Fiery War Axe and the Pirate package. Due to the nerfs to the axe and Patches the Pirate (it also went to Wild), the class is struggling for budget options.

The Boomsday Project brings along some mech synergy, but mostly in a neutral capacity. While it still isn’t enough for us to recommend committing too heavily to the class, this deck can help you complete your Warrior quests and get some explosive wins. Most of the cards recommended on the Neutral side are useful in some Paladin decks.

Btw, you probably want to replace the current midranged hunter deck with the other more secret oriented deck that used Spellstone and only 7 minions. You could replace Deathstalker Rexxar with a highmane or something.

I am sorry but I don’t know where to post regular questions so I will post this here.
I want to build a secret mage style deck I have looked into deck formulas listed here and have not found anything within that vein so if someone can post a budget secret mage that would be awesome ps I have a little over five hundred dust saved so feel free to add some non budget cards near that amount thanks!

In answer to your question I have written down every Mage related epic and legend I have as well as every Standard legend and epic
I built Tempo mage once and did not like the flow of it yet I do want to play mage as I have heard she is an important class to learn.
Anyway here is the list
Mage Epic:
Book of Specters x2
Primordial glyph x2
Arcane Keysmith x2
Pyroblast x 2
Counterspell x2
Other secrets:
Explosive Runes x2
Frozen clone x2
Mirror Entity x2
Ice Barrier x2

Mage Legends:
Frost Lich Jaina x1
Aluneth x1
Archmage Arugul x1 (sorry I pulled one of these and was only able to craft one of the other two)

Hello 🙂
I crafted the Budget Elemental Mage Deck a few days ago. It is so much fun 🙂
I am a new player and haven’t got aluneth yet and no dust left. I enchanted all of my free legendaries for this deck.

My question is at this point, if it is still worth it to collect dust for Aluneth even, if this card will leave the rotation with the new expansion coming next year. I don’t know how long it will take to collect that much dust. How much dust do you get if a legendary leaves the rotation and become a wild card?

Basicly, average dust cost of a pack is one hundred, and due to quests you usually can collect 180 – 170 gold in three days. So, if you will win six to nine games, while completing the tasks, you will collect 1600 dust in 24 days. This will leave you with a really useful legendary for the next eight (Isn’t it?) month. I think, that’s worth it, at least, if you’r going to use it)
(Btw, this sounds hard, but crafting a legendary in a month is really not so hard)

As a new player, you don’t want to sink dust into a legendary card. For starters, a deck can eaisilly get boring, and you might want to play something else. So while it might take only 24 days to save up for a legendary, you’ll be getting NO cards in that period of time, to further expand and enhance your collection, or to make new decks. Also, this deck is not very powerful, with no meta version. I’m doubting Aluneth’s place in this deck. In addition, that legendary card fits in little or no decks outside of this one, and could easily faze out of the meta. So overall, crafting a legendary can totally ruin your experience, and until you get a larger collection, I’d only recommend dusting cards that you never expect to use. (Sorry for typos, I typed this quickly on a phone)

The decks are great, good job, love the website 😀 Just a question: Could we get some tips on upgrades to these decks? Expensive cards that we might have to use in these decks. Or this doesn’t makes any sense? haha ty!

Look at the meta versions of these decks (most of them have a meta version), and make substitutions based on the cards with the highest winrates.

Examples:
Rogue – Prince Keleseth and vilespines
Druid – Whispering woods and branching paths – malfurion too eventually
Mage- Jaina and blazecallers (Jaina has insane synergy with elementals)
Priest – Shadow visions (alternatively you could build the spiteful deck with spiteful summoners and free from amber)
Warlock- Hooked reavers, Prince keleseth, Gul’dan
Shaman – different class is a good upgrade
Paladin – Call to arms (insane card for that deck) and later sunkeeper tarim
Warrior- Town criers are a good craft for that deck

Nice list. I would also add that although Warlock is currently very strong, it’s decks are also very expensive. If you are short on mana and are looking to upgrade a single class, I would suggest Druid, Rogue, Mage or specially Paladin instead. Priest isalso good, but it doesn’t have a tier 1 deck right now. As for Shaman and Warrior, both classes remain at the bottom and are not worth the investment if you are a FTP or budget player with low mana avaliable.

Lady in White turned out to be a bad deck for many reasons, best priest deck rn is control priest with mind blast

Olkov

May 17, 2018 at 1:47 am

I have lady in white from firsts packs and I really love to see her play. For.me it’s amazing card but most of the time she doesn’t work… Of course it’s nice to throw on the table 9/9 steambot but too often she is too slow… She works as a nice additional card for deck with double heal and inner fire ( steambot cost 4 and have 9 health so it’s possible to do otk with it). I have in this deck weapon for priest and lyra as well so it sometimes works ( but most of the time lady in white is far in the deck to have any usage from her).

What you are playing with LiW.that is so good? Maybe I’m doing something wrong?

I did not judge your article, it is very helpful, I made my decks based on it, the problem is not hunter, no one can form a better budget deck for hunter, but in current environment, hunter is just too weak, New player would switch to other class after he beyond the newbie level.

Anyway, these decks are not expensive, and play different class would be more interesting and helpful.

i got rank 15 for the first time with a slightly upgraded midrange hunter. I used a 4k dust elemental mage and tried different variations of mage but i was hardstuck rank 16. 1.2 k dust midrange hunter got me rank 15

Dude Paladin has been a thing since forever – they’ve just swapped Quartermaster for Tarim, Level Up and/or Lightfused Stegadon; it’s always been a “normal” HS archetype – it’s just a bit stronger now than it has been for a long time.

It’s still beatable mind; I have few problems with it when running Control Warlock – especially with Despicable Dreadlord. Taunt-heavy decks generally do well too.

And who are you to judge whet other people should play? If you don’t like playing this deck than don’t. I can say the same about cubelock, about face Hunter, face mage, quest rogue or any other deck if I don’t like them. If you are playing ranked than you use every opportunity to take down your opponent. If you don’t like that style you can always play normal and give up if you face ‘cancer’ deck. But don’t tell other people why should they play. They will play with the deck that’s give them fun and satisfaction. That why hearstone was made , to give fun (and of course money to blizzard).

I LOVE THIS BUDGET DECK SECTION! Thank you so much for writing this up and caring for us, F2P players. Please keep this section up-to-date as the meta changes and perhaps provide a 2nd/3rd alternative for each class whenever possible. Keep up the good work!

Can we please get updates on these decks, pirates are almost non existent with patches nerf yet almost all these decks contain Golakka. It was nice to see them get rid of the creeper after nerf but golakka is somehow still in these decks and needs to be removed as well.

I disagree, though secret mage is very strong in ladder indeed this version doesn’t run alluneth (the 6 mana mage weapon) which really hurts the deck.
In my opinion inner fire priest is the best closely followed by zoo warlock and midrange hunter. After that mage and druid and the other decks are pretty trash.

I already have the full Budget Midrange Hunter deck and I am loving it, great guide! But, Is it worth crafting Secret Mage now or should I wait until April 2018 for the rotations and then spend my dust on updated budget decks? I suppose what I’m asking is, will these deck lists be updated very soon after the rotation or will they remain outdated until a few weeks after the rotation, if I’m making any sense? Thanks for any helpful repsonses.

Whoops, forgot to ask if these lists will be updated to address the nerfs to Patches and Creeper etc. Sorry for the unintentional spam, just really interested to hear from site admins and better players! 🙂

Mage won’t be viable after the rotations I don’t think, except if blizzard make a few new cards that support it. If you do have the dust or most of the cards you could craft it but I wouldn’t recommend this version as it doesn’t run the weapon which hard carries quite a few games.

Hi there,
built Midrange Hunter and im quite happy with the Deck. Recently crafted 2 Corridor Creepers as you recommended. Is cutting Hounds really the way to go? Quite liked the Synergy with huner’s Mark and helped to turn some lost games into wins. I felt like cutting the Hyena… good idea or is it definetly Hounds? And why is it Hounds? 😛

If you do end wanting to rank with the mage i made it to rank 11 in about 3 days. I played this game for a few months a few years ago and with that knowledge and this deck its been enjoyable experience. Thanks i hope to push to rank 5 by the end of month. I hope it’s possible

So also replace minions that not have a ton of synergy and arent overly impressive from bottom to top
Naga corsair
Bloodfury or demonfire
Devolve, bloodlust, squire, primalfin
One mana cards or defias
Shieldraiser elixir
Chaingang champ jailor
Bearshark flanking strike hounds
Dont use in jade

Highly disagree with the zoolock and evolve shaman replacement recommendations. In zoolock considering you dont run keleseth youd really want to use the 2 mana cards. Demonfire can create your turn 1 demon ( voidwalker/flame imp) into a big boy in the early game and provides additional removal. You could add a vicious fledgling to the deck and that combined with bloodfury can by itself win you the game sometimes. You should replace the blood imp and fire fly with creepers and fledglings( or techs).
In the evolve shaman argent squire is a really important card since it provides a strong turn 1 Play that can trade into your opponents 1 health minions, and primalfin is just a great card at making tokens and the 3 health make it often hard to remove on your opponents turn ( after you play it) + it has good synergy with flametongue. You usually dont need 2 devolves, but one is a good tech, replace the other one and maybe a jade spirit or chain gang. The 2 blood lusts are a must since you don’t have powerful minions like aya and the pirate package, making a board swarm into blood lust one of your main win conditions. Hope this helps.

I’m building a secret made, and I wonder if I could benefit from putting archmage antonidas and what to replace for corridor creeper. The deck is complete and I have 1120 dust to spend (without purchasing corridor creeper)

Thank you for these decks. I completed my Secret Mage and its so fun to play! I dont care about my rank, I just want to play a little with each class and this page its my guide to it. Thank you so much <3

In budget mage deck, what cards would I replace with Primordial Glyphs? Also any other cheap additions? I got 2k dust left. And should I put in Corridor Creeper into this deck, and if yes, what to replace? Thanks for reply.

just for anyone wondering about the priest deck specifically its really hard to play but is probably one of the best besides mage im at rank 4 atm and just needed a priest deck for some quest so i made the one here and i didnt climb much but i had a 5-4 win rate with is so its something to keep in mind that it can work in the right hands

Is it still worth spending my dust (I have 1500) to make a low-cost deck like the mid hunter, even with the ranked being in the final?
Or is it worth keeping my dust and the gold until next year?
Ps: And if I make it, how much time he is still being a good deck?

If the option is between these two decks it is better to think well. The ideal is to opt for a more enjoyable style because in reality neither of the two is particularly good.
– Tempo mage is bad against aggro and dragon priest, but good against the remaining priest decks, warlock control, jade and druid ramp. Also with the next rotation Medivh’s Valet and Firelands Portal leave standard. There is also talk of the possibility of Iceblock also leaving for the hall of fame.
– Hunter is weaker than tempo mage, being bad against warlock control, priest… (any long game oriented deck) but is good against aggressive decks like tempo mage, tempo rogue, zoolock etc, but thats true when you run the pirate packet… After the next rotation it loses no cards (but upgrading is much more expensive).
– Also, in any of the lists is essential the addition of Spellbreaker.

First you need to keep in mind that during the first month after the release of a new expansion the most successful decks will almost always be the most aggro ones (e.g., usually hunter is good for the first month and then decays). However, in this meta it is likely that aggro is to stay +/- as it is due to Creeper Corridor and Patches. However, it is already known decks that can give a good counter to aggro, as the case of warlock control.

Knowing this you need to answer the set of answers:
1 – What style of play gives me more pleasure in playing?
2 – Against what do you see more play in rank mode? And what is good and bad against it?
3 – What is my goal? To have a single good deck, or to have variety (even with weaker decks) to avoid getting bored?
4 – What cards do I already have? (sometimes it is possible to make decks better than the typical budget ones because you already have the core cards or some epic-legendary ones)
5 – Which cards will leave the end of year (March-April) standard? Do I lose to investment I’m making now?

After answering this you will set your expectations and you will have an idea of ​​what you really want to do and how far you can go with that in rank mode. It is important to be aware of the relevance of various cards such as Creeper Corridor and Patches, what you lose if you do not use them and what can be used instead when you run your list and when you run against a list with it (e.g. if you like aggro and it is very expensive to use the pirate pack, you can use Golakka Crawler to give counter to those who use it if you see many pirate decks). Budget slots may also include more tech cards than the rest and alternative strategies that no one is waiting for (and if your oponent does not expect it, he/she can not play around it).

Hey so im a returning player, I was really active but stopped playing around when mean streets hit; so i have all the cards before there but only some from the newer expansions. I was wondering if you would recommend the best budget deck right now just because im not totally familiar with the meta (and dont know alot of newer cards); also is there a crafting guide for the most versitile new legendaries? I have Lich King and 8000 dust but dont want to spend on anything without knowing the meta

Well, patches and southsea deckhand are in almost every class as an aggro deck… but here’s a list:

-Druid, Priest, Hunter, and Warlock hero cards are found in most decks of the respective classes
-Lich Kind is Good
-Patches for aggro (with southsea deckhand and corridor creeper)
-Bonemare is a pretty good common

This is a bit general because I don’t have the time to get in detail of every class, but I just wanted to send a reply while I’m here.

Medivh can fit in pretty well to a Secret Mage deck, I would take out a Cryomancer as the freeze synergy in a Secret Mage deck, especially one without Frost Nova, is kinda bad (Cold Wraith’s stats justify its inclusion though they can also be substituted). Meanwhile, Frost Lich Jaina can replace a Faceless Summoner in the Elemental Mage deck, seeing as it is not necessary for such a deck and Frost Lich Jaina can easily generate minions with her Hero Power. I would even replace the second Faceless Summoner with a second Flamestrike in order to achieve more board clears and greater survivability.

It’s great that you keep this updated and many players like me benefit enormously from this effort.

Another section I’d love to read, or something just to keep in consideration, is a selection of decks that uses only Classic + Un’Goro + KFT so that what we invest in term of dust will still be there in the next rotation.

These budgets are awesome, even reached rank 5 with the hunter list last season. Will be really really happy to see more budgets for Knights of the Frozen Throne. Good work for real, your efforts werent for nothing!

Thats awesome! By the way would you please write somewhere in the beginning of the page that the decks are ready when they are. Just checked and saw some decks are still being updated. Cant wait to play with them :D!

I want to make quest Rogue eventually but being free to play that could be sometime down the road. MY big challenge right now is dust to make these and I have cards that I’m not sure if I should DE them or not which would help out. I’m probably a good 300-400 dust short.

I am f2p as well, I have quite a few expensive decks. It really came down to rng for me, pulled a couple golden legionaries which DE for alot of f’n dust. I wouldnt DE any cards you dont have dups of for dust though. Never know when a new deck might come out. GL

I have around 1700 dust and I’m not sure if I should go for the warrior pirate or for the elemental shaman. The only legendary card in my possession is Baron Geddon, is it good to replace something for him or not?

I’d like to say that the elemental buff paladin listed in this article isn’t good. And doesn’t work, I built it and tried it and was hard stuck rank 10. The deck is too slow to beat aggro decks excluding pirate warrior, and isn’t good enough against other slow decks. I had extreme trouble against most meta decks.

I just want to say thank you for putting the work into this section, it really helps us poor folks enjoy the game more! Even if you dont follow the list directly it definitely gives an idea of what a successful deck build looks like.

Great guide, thanks for the hard work of those less fortunate to not be able to use a lot of dust.
I always make Decks for my son who loves to play Hearthstone too.
These Budget Deck Guides are always a big help for me to make Decks for him with his current Card Collection.
Keep up the good work, it is much appreciated.

Hi admins,
Your site has fantastic articles delivered in a timely manner and it has become my favourite HS resource.
I find it a shame that with such a wealth of information it is rather hard to sort through. For example if an article I saw 2 weeks ago came back to mind I’d have to rifle through the site to find it, not knowing if it will be on page 3 or 5 or whatever.
Perhaps you can implement a “Table of Contents” of sorts, a little like the weekly roundup but just a permanent sidebar or the like where we can browse the headlines of articles for easy access?